BLUE EYED BOY by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond . 68

When first I encountered the blue eyed boy
I was hardly more than an impressionable child
Something about this youngman
drove this youngman wild
He was more than a treasure; less than a toy
Not to be lumped (or lumpen) with the hoi polloi

Never never had I seen a man onscreen
Remotely approaching this paragon of beauty
Laboring opposite Virginia Mayo he did more than his duty
There was nothing soft about him; always smart.
always keen
The handsomest fucking Jewboy we'd ever seen

Gravitas; a chiseled face; the body from hell
Silver Chalice sank without a trace
But none of us could forget that face
Shortly, another epic rang the same bell
A Rocky Graziano biopic? Oh well

We were asked to agree: Somebody Up There Liked Him.
Some bodies Out There certainly did
We all flocked breathlessly to patronize this kid
This Theater Devil who addressed our every whim
...suddenly, we were all obsessed by him

We had to see him in color for the fix to take;
What tied the can to it was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
When we saw those ice-blue eyes every man Jack of us
went WOOF
YEAH. Brick Pollett was the role of roles
which released the brake
Suddenly our boy was impossible to shake

Nothing kept us from adoring him; now
we were free to gaze
Unhesitatingly upon that precious face
To worship that tight body was no mere disgrace
Because Paul Newman had become a craze
Releasing us from Brando and Clift and lazier days.

Voluptuous Liz Taylor he could push away
He could embody the lascivious thoughts of Tennessee
Diverging sharply from the used-to-be
Of Gable, Cooper, and embolden
Hairy thoughts of hairy-chested Bill Holden
Now we were all on our merry way
Cinema was in a different day

All of us who knew we were more
than just a wee bit different
In the straight Eisenhower society, chafing at the bit
In the basement of the Pollett mansion
a new match was lit
We were chomping something much chewier than chives
As blue-eyed Paul faced off against Burl Ives
for us, our boy was more than heaven-sent

Newman blasted his way into the Pantheon like a rocket.
Great roles fell to him like veritable plums
We agreed: something more than wicked this way comes
Then our blue-eyed clever Action Man
Returned to the Broadway stage and Gadge Kazan
Pausing to put another plum role in his pocket

Finally
we had the core of the Blue-eyed Boy;
Drooled over the adventures of Chance Wayne
Knowing no one might have courage to go there again
Bounding, rebounding to deflect his manly rage
Against the lacquered countenance of Miss Page
Re-filling her syringe so we might all enjoy

The hustler hubris of Tennessee's Sweet Bird
Then the conjunction we might all have anticipated
Came with a marriage to a gal we might have hated
We'd experienced Eve and her Three Faces
But Miss Joanne was one of our new graces
So: we whispered: Newman.
and, joined to that: Woodward.

For years they conjoined on item after item
We all came out to rally 'round the flag
And, with Lee Remick and Angela filling up the bag
No one could mope that we had seen a bummer
When Paul and Joanne took us on that Long Hot Summer.
They were so juicy we felt we could bite 'em.

Clift fell by the wayside; Brando wallowed into fat
For the Sixties Paul was Master of the Game
Knocking off Hud to maximize his fame
Going nose-to-nose with acting zeal
with always amazing Patricia Neal
And we agreed: this is where it's at.

Then there was Harper, Cool Hand Luke, and Butch
Cassidy to round out Paul's escutcheon
Surely there had been no kind of clutch on
This kind of actorly career;
Paul Newman was less than damned and more than dear
Throbbing, sobbing
we all released that clutch.

He and Bob Redford sailed, so together, off that cliff
We suspected The Worst; prayed for it, actually
That this kind of intensity could exist
between He and He
Then super-epics became the Seventies thing
Towering Inferno outpaced The Sting
As our boy tried out another acting riff

SUPERSTAR. But there was so much more
to him than that
As his career dissapated into chunks
Of meaty fare like Fort Apache, the Bronx
Absence of Malice yet another grail
and The Verdict convinced us Our Man could not fail
But saw (for the first time) rings of sweat around his hat

Is Paul Newman possibly getting old?

No one could suggest a course so dampling
As he progressed from Sally Field to Charlotte Rampling
Then, to generate the newest Newman's pet
He marketed his own brand of vinaigrette
Best served lukewarm; even better cold

Color of Money was the reward for all which
had gone before
And in a crazy kind of actor-attrition
He rounded it all off on the Road to Perdition
Sending Tom Hanks to his grave with that killer's smile
Knowing he could be this kind of bastard all the while
Never quite wholesome, but never, never
just another acting whore.

Last saw him on the Showtime special Iconoclasts
Leading Bob Redford through bosky dells
of Connecticut
We Newman-fanciers knew deep in our gut
Since we had spent fifty years worshipping this friend
All of us were afraid to write: THE END
Because Paul Newman is a pleasure which always lasts.